Part 1 Defending Mother Russia
Before you imagine yourself as in the picture above; sweeping across the plans of Western Russia in a mad dash to Moscow and locales West consider this. Stalin is waiting. Russia is waiting. the flames of fear and hatred have been stoked. The Motherland will be protected. Hours of play, dozens if not 100’s of sessions have been experienced, broken down, assessed and evaluated for the best means to break the back of the German invasion.
What will you face. How will you handle the defense presented to you? Where can you maximize those precious first turns of offense? Where can you limit soak off attacks and Exchange results?
Which part of the defense will give you the best opportunity for break thru and true exploitation, just like a true Wermacht Blitzkrieg spieler would.
Listed below are several defensive openings that you are sure to face in the tournament. Take a look. Ponder, reflect. Do you have an effective attack plan for each one? Some of the great names of gaming are participating in this tournament. Many of the defenses shown here are old favorites of theirs that they themselves designed. You are replaying more than one piece of history. Its not just the history of a military conflict. Rather it is also the history of a game. Reliving its greatness, its popularity, its contention!
Some housekeeping. Where a unit is stacked and there is no text next to it, the unit underneath is the same. A number and a * indicates the number of units of a certain type.
Angillo
Leningrad:
Bakulskis
Leningrad
Bullis
Leningrad
Coming shortly more iconic defenses.
I see in all the defenses the names of players are not spelled correctly. The defense I use is not the one shown in either this post or the article I wrote for the General many, many years ago. I will reveal my opening set-up after the first few rounds of the 50th Anniversary Stalingrad PBEM tournament and only if asked. As George so correctly notes, it is not the opening set-up that makes the player but where he places his units in response to the German attacks. Placing Russian units on Z16 when both 7-10-4s are in Brest or south of Brest invites a costly 1-2 that could prevent a Russian 7-10-4 from reaching S18 after the Russian’s first move. I now always leave a 7-10-4 in a position to defend S18 against a German attack on turn two. So much for the old days. Joe Angiolillo
PLease check the 2-3-6 position in the Bullis defense?
there is nothing to check. it is taken from a pre existing setup created by a whoever did the module that I took it from.
I am merely sharing what is freely available. You would need to find out who made the module and where they obtained the various defenses. It is conceivable they placed a unit in the wrong place.
Hipshotau
That’s interesting. It does create an interesting challenge, namely what it the most systematically unpleasant thing you can do to the Russians with that opening?
A 1-2 on CC15 is an interesting add-on. The extra soakoffs needed to make it a 1-1 exchange at attack, with a 50% chance of trapping the units in Brest might well be attractive. Roll it after the attacks on Z16 and Z15 to block retreats, and only advance one unit across the river. The 3-1 on Minsk with an 8, 6, and 4 is clear. A stack on Z17 is good. grabbing ii12 is fine. A soak-off to leave some armor on AA14, doubled behind the river against Brest, might be wise.